The real total: what commission does to a small business

Last updated: September 18, 2026

How do you calculate what a platform actually costs you?

Add up three things: the commission or lead price per customer, the fixed monthly costs, and the value of the customer relationship that stays with the platform. Then pull three months of statements, add up everything the platform deducted, and divide that by the number of customers you kept from it. That one number per customer is your real platform price, and it rarely matches what's on the pricing page.

Four platforms, one calculation

Treatwell for the salon, Thuisbezorgd for the restaurant, Werkspot for the handyman, Booking for the B&B. Four different sectors, and it still comes down to the same question: is this worth it? You can only answer that once you know what a customer really costs you through the platform, and that number has three parts.

Part one is what gets deducted per customer or per booking. Part two is the fixed and add-on costs sitting alongside it, like a monthly subscription or transaction fees. Part three is harder to put a number on but matters most: who owns the customer afterward? Whoever holds the customer data and the repeat purchase wins the next round. This guide walks through those three parts for all four platforms, using the figures the platforms themselves publish. Where no public figure exists, I say so and point you to where your own rate lives.

Part one: the commission or lead price

Treatwell is the clearest about its model. Its own pricing page states 35% commission on a new customer's first booking and 0% on repeat appointments, all excluding VAT. What this looks like for a salon trying to depend less on the platform is laid out in the Treatwell guide.

Thuisbezorgd has no public page listing its current rates. In June 2022, trade media Emerce and Twinkle both covered a rate increase, from 13% to 14% of gross revenue, effective July 24 of that year. Trade publication Lunchroom put it around 30% in 2020 for restaurants using Thuisbezorgd's own delivery service; I haven't found more recent public confirmation of that delivery rate. The full breakdown of what you pay is in the Thuisbezorgd guide.

Werkspot works with a price per lead instead of a percentage. The amount per response varies by job type; your current lead prices sit in your own Werkspot account. According to its own support pages, the charge lands the moment contact details are exchanged, whether or not the job ends up going to you. How to turn a lead price into a cost per job won is covered in the Werkspot guide.

Booking.com doesn't publish a fixed percentage that applies to everyone. The company states on its partner pages that it works with a per-reservation commission model and that the percentage depends on factors including country and property type. Your own rate is in your agreement and in the extranet, and any percentage you read in a blog post is at best a rough guide.

Part two: the costs beside the commission

The percentage is rarely the whole bill. Treatwell's pricing page lists, alongside commission, a Starter subscription of 35 euros a month and 2% transaction fees when a customer pays online in advance. In 2020, Lunchroom wrote that an administration fee per order came on top of Thuisbezorgd's commission. At Werkspot, whether subscription costs get added to lead prices depends on your own agreement. And on every platform, you can pay extra to appear higher up in the results, which is optional but pushes your effective percentage up further.

So start your calculation from your statement, and only pull up the pricing page afterward: the statement already has all those line items together, in euros instead of percentages.

Part three: who owns the customer

This part shows up on no invoice, and it costs you the most over time. Book a stay through Booking, and the name and email address sit in Booking's system. Order from a regular customer out of habit through the Thuisbezorgd app, and you pay the same percentage on that order as on a total stranger, while that customer opens a screen where your competitors are one scroll away.

So the calculation changes depending on the type of customer. For a genuinely new customer, you're buying reach you didn't have, and commission can easily be worth the money. For a customer who wanted to be with you anyway, you're paying for a middleman you didn't need. A fair verdict on a platform needs two sums, then: one for new customers and one for returning ones.

The math with real numbers

Three examples using the published figures above. A 48-euro haircut for a new customer through Treatwell costs 16.80 euros in commission at the published 35% rate. A 30-euro order through Thuisbezorgd costs 4.20 euros at the rate of 14% reported in 2022; run a hundred such orders in a month and you're at 420 euros. A handyman whose leads average out at 20 euros and who converts one in four ends up spending 80 euros for each job landed.

For Booking I can't fairly run an example like that, because there's no public rate to calculate with. Pull your own commission invoices there and do the math with your actual percentage.

Notice what these examples have in common: they're per-customer costs that keep running the whole time you stay on the platform. A fixed cost you can budget for. A percentage of your revenue grows right along with your success.

How to find your own numbers

Published rates go stale and contracts differ, so work from your own documents. You need three, and you can find them tonight.

Your agreement with the platform. Search for the word commission or lead price and note the percentage or amount, plus what it's calculated on.
Your statements covering the past three months. Total up everything deducted or invoiced: commission, subscription, transaction fees, promotion.
Your customer list from the same period. Count how many customers or bookings the platform brought you, and mark which of those were already yours before.

What to do with the number

Divide the total of your statements by your number of customers and you have your price per customer. If that number startles you, don't cancel your platform right away. For new customers, it's often still your strongest way to be found, and an empty calendar costs more than commission does.

The move that actually pays off: give your returning customers a route around the platform. Your own site where booking or ordering just works, your own link on the receipt and in the confirmation email, your own booking button on your Google profile. Every repeat customer who comes to you directly is one you take out of the commission math. That's how the platform settles into the role where the sum actually works out: bringing in new customers, and nothing else.

Frequently asked questions

How much commission does Booking.com charge in the Netherlands?

There's no fixed public percentage. Booking.com itself states that the rate varies per reservation, including by country and by property type. The percentage for your business is in your own contract and your extranet account, and that's the only number worth calculating with.

Why do the percentages I read online vary so much?

Because rates change year to year, contract to contract, and situation to situation, and a lot of articles repeat old figures. Thuisbezorgd, for instance, raised its rate from 13% to 14% in mid-2022, so anyone citing the old number is off. Treat any percentage you find online as a rough guide and go by your own statement.

Do subscription costs count toward my cost per customer?

Yes, everything the platform charges you belongs in the sum: subscription, transaction fees, promotion, administration fees. Those line items are exactly what separates the bare percentage in the brochure from what a customer actually costs you.

Is commission fair, then, for a new customer?

Often, yes. Someone who would never have found you without the platform is worth paying for; that's just acquisition. It gets uncomfortable with people who already knew they wanted you and still come in through the platform, because there you're buying reach you already had.

Should I drop multiple platforms at once?

Usually not, and definitely not all at once. Let platforms do their job for new customers, build your own channel for returning ones in the meantime, and only scale back once enough business is coming in directly. That way you don't open a gap in your calendar or your revenue.

Do the math first, then the site

Run that calculation once with your own statements. If the per-customer figure it produces makes you wince, a channel of your own for returning customers is the obvious next step. That's what I build with [[PAKKET-LINK]]: EUR 1,200 flat, excl. VAT, ready in 2-3 weeks, hosting included. The domain is registered in your own name and costs around 15 euros a year. And you see it before you pay: if you don't like the site, you pay nothing. I can't promise you the top of Google; you get an address where your regulars book or order commission-free. Email your numbers to hello@rachelelz.com and I'll take a look at where the tipping point sits.

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